 All right, good morning and welcome to this week's edition of Encompass Live. I am your host, Krista Porter, here at the Nebraska Library Commission in, for those of you not from here in Lincoln, Nebraska. Encompass Live is the Nebraska Library Commission's weekly webinar series where we cover a variety of topics that may be of interest to libraries. We broadcast the show live every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. central time. But if you're unable to join us on Wednesdays, that's fine. We do record the show every week and it is then posted onto our website for you to watch at your convenience. And I will show you at the end of today's show where you can access all of our archives. Both the live show and the recordings are free and open to anyone to watch. So please do share with your friends, family, neighbors, colleagues, anyone who you think may be interested in any of the topics we have on the show. Encompass Live, no, the Nebraska Library Commission is a state agency for all libraries in the state of Nebraska. So we will, we have sessions on for public K-12 schools, academics, correction facilities, special libraries, museums. It just runs again. It really, our only criteria is that it's something about libraries. Something libraries are doing, something we think they should be doing, services and products we think that may be of interest to them. So it's all across, all over the place there, which sounds bad, but it's really good. We have it, we have something for everyone. We do sometimes have Nebraska Library Commission staff that come on the show to talk about things we're doing here locally via through the Commission, but we also bring in guest speakers and that is what we have this morning on the line with us remotely from two different locations north of me in Nebraska are some members of our, we're doing something jointly here with the Nebraska Library Association. That's our state association for libraries, librarians, and members of their diversity committee are with us today. And I will say, hopefully everyone has, I'm sure everyone has heard about the weather issues, flooding, disaster happening here in Nebraska this past week or so. And I wasn't sure if we were going to be having this session today because our, people on this, Anika specifically is up in Norfolk, Nebraska, one of the areas surrounded by water, possibly still, I'm not sure Anika. Yeah, Norfolk itself is not too bad actually, but surrounding areas are still really affected and Elisa works in Fremont, which had a lot of flooding as well. So, yes, and then in the other camera you see there, we've got three other staff who are gathered together at our University of Nebraska, Omaha, correct? Guys, that's, yeah, Elisa Cruz, who's from, as you said, Fremont is there. Angela Kroger, who's from UNO, and Laura Traylan, who's from UNL, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, but lives up that way. So convenient for all of them to gather together there. But we were able to do it, everyone can get that where they needed to be for this morning. So they're going to talk about reading diversely, as you can see here. So I'm just going to hand over to you guys to take it away and tell us what's going, what we want to about more things we should read, more things to put on our to-do list, to-read list that is just way too long already. But it can never be too long for me. Okay, well, so just a little bit about this session. It started off in our state conference in 2017. A lot of us, diversity committee members did a poster session and had our reviews and that sort of a thing. And then almost a year ago to the day, we did another reading diversely on Encompass Live. So it's sort of part book talk, part resource sharing, and just sort of exploring the ways that we as individuals can broaden our own reading choices, but then also thinking about our library collections as well. So with that, I think we can just jump in. Okay, well, I'm Elisa, so I will get started. The book that I chose to talk about first is Across the Hundred Mountains. This book is, it was powerful for me to read it. You can see that it was written in 2006, but I feel like it's still very timely, especially with these immigration issues and you're hearing about these children being detained on the border and these atrocities that are happening. So that's part of the reason why I chose to read it. I mean, it is a Hispanic, she's from Mexico, so it is resonant with me and my family, but I feel like everybody should read this book to get a little bit of empathy about what, I guess, challenges these immigrants face. I mean, I don't think that I even realized how much danger they put themselves in to try to come here to work any kind of job they can work, just have a better life to be able to eat every day. And so I think that it made me take a second look at what I have every day and the things that I've grown up with. Like, I never have known what it's like to go to bed hungry, you know? And so this book is very powerful and it's not easy to read. There are some tough parts in there that that'll challenge you, but it's definitely worth reading and I have in Spanish, it's called Traves de Cien Montañas. So if you have anybody that that reads in Spanish, I would definitely recommend that as well. I ordered both copies of it for my library because I think it's important to have those. And so I think that this is, I would recommend reading this. Now, the reason this came across my radar is because originally in one of our diversity committee meetings, I brought this up to Angela and Anika that maybe we could do a reading challenge within our committee. And this was one that happened to be suggested and we weren't able to get our our ducks in a row to do that as a group. But I I'm very glad that I read this. And then I've, like I said, I've been I've got the Spanish copy to read it in the original language. So I highly recommend this one. Yeah, that's pretty much it for that one. OK, this, the Poet X, even if you're not a poetry fan, I think that this is one of the most powerful books I've read in quite a while. I love poetry, so it wasn't a challenge for me. But she writes this, you know, it is written in poetry, but it's it reads like a novel. And you can see I have on here just some of the awards that this author has received recently, the top one, the 2019. That's a huge award for Latino writers or anything. I just and she deserves it because this book speaks to so many levels. I related to it because the mother is super like old fashioned Catholic and forces the religion so much on the main authors, Yomara. And I related to that because I, you know, that's how I grew up. My grandma was very old school Catholic. And, you know, I just it was like some of the things that she wrote about were I thought, oh, wow, somebody can relate to how I felt. And so that was neat to to have somebody, I don't know, almost cathartic like to feel like, oh, I wasn't the only one that that question to, you know, those things. And so it's really neat. She talks about stuff that we all probably went through as teenagers when you question how you feel about a person. I just thought it was a very powerful book. And then I she found her voice through poetry. She found a way to speak her emotions, to to question some of these things that she was feeling. And I think that was amazing because that's something I I hope that a lot of us have at least found one book that has made us feel maybe more powerful as a person. You I for me, books were a magical part of of my life. So I think reading this was very powerful. And I highly recommend reading this. And one of the other things that I liked about it is that her brother is in the book like she knows that he's gay. And they're so fearful in the book because they're a very old school Catholic as well as Hispanic and in the Hispanic culture, it's still a little bit of a taboo thing. And so and she does she tells him, dude, you are who you are. I love you no matter what, you're my brother and that's it. You know, and so I think that that was a really neat side story happening in the book that challenge between the old ways of thinking and then this, you know, this more open minded thing. And I thought that was really a neat thing to read about. So. Yeah, read it. OK, and then I know it's called Diverse Reads, but these are two. These are two books that I read last year that have now, you know, turned into movies, and I watched both of them recently. I wrote a paper on the hate you give for my cultural class that I'm taking this semester. And I got an A pause because it's a really good movie. I mean, the book was amazing. If you haven't read it yet, you probably ought to. But the movie was very well done. It's very powerful and sometimes seeing things played out kind of makes you understand, I guess, things in a different way. And then reading the reviews, different points of view that were that were taken on it. I just thought it was very, very interesting. I thought that I thought that the hate you give both the book and this movie are they're challenging oppression. So I didn't realize that either as as a minority. You know, in this case, she's a black girl and it's she has to hide part of herself to feel like she's OK in her surroundings when she goes to her private school or what have you. And I don't I don't know that I understood that when I read the book. And so I feel like that was powerful for me to see. Oh, yeah, like speaking, girl, like I just thought it was amazing. And so I recommend watching it. And like I said, if you haven't read the book, do. Then I the Boy Erased, which I did last year, like Anika said, almost a year to the day, the three of us with Jessica did this same kind of talk. And I talked about Boy Erased last year, the book. And so now, you know, the movie and Holy Cow, what a powerful movie. And I almost like if you're not if you're kind of like soft, you know, like if you can't get through gruesome, like it's not easy to watch, I'll just leave it at that. But again, it's about this kid going through this thing and then coming out in the end saying, you know what, screw it. I am who I am and you're going to accept that or not. And I just thought, oh, wow, I can not I can not even imagine that. Like I cannot imagine somebody telling me that I can't love you unless you change a part of who you are. And so this movie, it was very well done. Like I said, it's pretty powerful. And if you watch it, if you run it from your library or buy it or whatever, watch the extras, watch how passionate that director is about having made this movie, and it will make you so appreciative that we're finally coming to this point, you know, in our world. So yeah, now those remain. OK, we actually we actually did a show here on an in-cup of saliva a while ago about book versus the movie. Yes. That it isn't always, you know, the stereotype, I think, is the book is always better than the movie. But it's not always true. And I know something from both of them. And some people, like you said, do you respond better to the visual than to the reading? Well, and I normally don't. I'm not a big movie buff. But these were ones that I, you know, because I read the books, I was like, all right, just like when the help came out, I was like, I got to watch it. You know, yeah. You come to life, too, especially if it's a book that you've really loved. Yeah. That's right. So these are good ones. And like I said, with Boy Erased, I would highly recommend reading it. And then if you do watch it, watch the extras because it's very, very moving. So yay. OK, so this is Angela over at UNO. And I decided I wanted to try to find some books featuring people who use pronouns other than he or she for themselves, specifically, you know, non-binary, agender people. And there are a lot of terms that have come into use pretty recently. Some of these are still not even in popular use. I found them on searching some information on non-binary people. And some of these words like by gender, try gender. I hadn't even seen those words before I started reading this. But non-binary and agender, these words in particular are becoming pretty common. And, you know, I'm not going to go through all of these definitions. There will not be a test. But if you're really interested in this, I did provide a link where you could go read up on some of the non-binary identities. But the idea is I was. I've long been a proponent of a gender neutral pronoun, you know, in cases of, you know, when you don't know somebody's gender. And, you know, like somebody left their backpack, I hope they remember to come back and get it. It's actually pretty natural in English to use they as a pronoun when you don't know somebody's gender. In fact, it's been used since the time of Chaucer. It's not a new thing. Shakespeare used it. Jane Austen used it. C.S. Lewis used it. A lot of big name authors have used singular they to refer to generic people or people whose gender isn't known. What is becoming more common recently, and I've seen a lot of people on UNO campus identifying this way, is a preference for they, them, for people. This is their gender identity. They're not identifying as she, they're not identifying as he. They are they, and that's referring to a single individual. And so I was trying to find books that actually used they, them as the pronouns for the protagonist. And turns out it's not that easy, because when you go out and you look for lists of books about non-binary characters, they're usually lumped in with the lists often include books about transgender people. And that's actually kind of a different identity. And sometimes it's hard to and I'm great. I'm glad to see all the books about trans people. That's also wonderful. I'm not knocking that at all. That's that's awesome. But sometimes when you're looking for a specific thing, it's good to find that specific thing. So I was looking for they, they, them. And one that came up was The Fifty Seven Bus by Dasha Slater. And this is a nonfiction book written by a written for a young adult audience. And it's about a hate crime that occurred in Oakland, California. Twenty twenty twelve or twenty fourteen, somewhere in that in that range. And the gist of the the incident was Sasha is a non-binary young person. I think maybe around sixteen at the time of the incident or somewhere in there. And they they're white. They came from a privileged enough background to be able to attend private schools. Very, very smart, sharp individual and had to ride this this public bus, the number fifty seven bus to get to to and from school routinely. And public bus, of course, you're going to have people from all different areas. And also writing the bus was another student group of students from one of the less privileged areas of Oakland. And so we've got Richard, a young, young black man growing up in the kind of neighborhood where almost every single life is touched by extreme violence, gangs and drugs and all that. By the time Richard was, you know, by the time of this incident, he was also around, I think, around sixteen at the time. But he had already had two members of his family and two close friends be murdered. And so it came from pretty, pretty hard life. The the incident that happened on the bus is Richard goofing around and egged on by his friends, sees the dude in the dress and is flicking his lighter. He's going to set the skirt on fire and thinking to hear Richard's side, he didn't think the fire was going to do anything. He thought it was going to smolder for a bit and get patted out and just be a little practical joke or a prank. Unfortunately, Sasha's skirt went up like a fireball and Sasha was very severely burned, had to have a lot of skin grafts. They were in the hospital for a very long time. They recovered and all that. But Richard was, you know, of course, arrested. And then there was a lot of debate over whether he should be tried as an adult with hate crime charges tacked on and all of this. Now, the treatment of this, the way this book handles these two young people, it's the first section of the book is sort of a biography of Sasha and how they came to be where they are in their their life. And then the second section is sort of a similar sensitive treatment of Richard and how he came to be where he was at that point in his life. The book also spends a fair amount of time talking about juvenile justice issues and cognitive developments in the teenage brain and how it differs from the adult brain. And it's actually a very sensitive and good portrayal of both of these young people and how this all happened. And the question is, should, you know, is it is it really? Yes, the crime is horrible. It's absolutely horrible what Richard did to Sasha. But was Richard the kind of person who couldn't be rehabilitated, the kind of person who should be tried as an adult and locked away forever? And I would and the author would also argue, no, he definitely had remorse. He didn't realize the severity of it, what was going to happen. He certainly didn't mean to hurt actually hurt Sasha. And one of the details that sticks out to me that shows me that Richard was the type of person who could have turned around if things had had happened differently. If he hadn't made this one extremely terrible choice is he had gone to his school's attendance compliance officer. And whereas every other student in this in this officer's 800 student caseload had been referred to that officer and sent to them, Richard is the only one who had actually gone to her and said, my life is going off track. I want to do better than the path I see myself on. Can you help me? So this is not an irredeemable person. And this book makes a really good exploration of how this incident affected the lives of both of these young people and how our society created circumstances that would allow this sort of thing to even happen. So I would actually recommend this book not only to people interested in gender issues because the book's been some time talking about Sasha and how they came to identify as a gender and how they came to prefer they then pronouns, but it also spends a lot of time on, like, say juvenile justice issues on socioeconomic issues, racial dynamics. So there is a lot in this book. And the author had said that in an interview that if she'd written the book for an adult audience, she would have included a whole lot more information about policies and laws. And I'm glad she didn't because this book was written for a juvenile audience. The focus is really close in on the people on their lives, the effect on their relationships, their families, their friends, their futures. It works out to be a very, very powerful, very touching book. And it gives you a lot to think about in a lot of areas. So I would I would recommend this book actually to anybody, almost regardless of what your interest is, because it does touch on such a large, such a large nest of intersecting aspects of life in American society. So I highly recommend this book to pretty much everyone. And a much lighter note, the quick and easy guide to they then pronouns is written as a comic book, so it's super fast and easy to read. And it's it's kind of lighthearted, but it's a good usage guide to help people who are maybe who maybe haven't met people or who have only met one person and haven't gotten used to the idea of using pronouns other than he or she. And so this is just kind of a quick, little, non-threatening, easy, quick read to introduce the concept and get people familiar with it. It does cover some other pronouns that non-binary people might use, but it really focuses closely on they, them. And it's it's just a nice little book that I think every library could benefit from having in the collection, because it's a it's a good little little reference book, even if it is written as a comic book. It's it's a suitable reference book, I think one's pretty recent. Yeah, it's it's pretty new. It's just just last year. And the last book I want to talk about, and I hesitate a little bit on this because it's it's older. This book was written in the early nineties before a lot of these before a lot of the terminology that's in becoming in common use today. Has has really entered the public sphere. And so it doesn't use they, them pronouns. The book is entirely in the non-binary character's point of view. And so the pronouns used for this character, of course, I meet because it's it's in it's in their point of view. And it's probably a third of the way into the book before you even start getting the first clues as to what this person's gender might be. And that comes in the form of the confusion of other characters around this person. Some refer to Sparrow as he, some refer to them as she and some. And this really grates on me and feels very, very uncomfortable. Some refer to Sparrow as it, and that's very horrifying. But the book always stays in Sparrow's point of view. And Sparrow is actually a pretty sympathetic character. I really identified with them pretty closely. The cover art makes this look like a young adult book. I would not recommend this for young adults, actually, partially because the some of the dated language. I would recommend this book for anybody who is interested in. Gender issues and who also would have nostalgia for VHS. And I'm not actually joking about that VHS is kind of a big deal in the story. This is a post-apocalyptic story and Sparrow's job, livelihood depends on finding old VHS tapes of pre-war movies and selling them. So the thing that really caught me about this, though, is that once the other character Sparrow's friends, the people who actually really care about Sparrow start understanding that this person isn't male and isn't female, they make an assumption. They assume, well, that means both a mix. And it turns out that Sparrow's is neither. And both and neither are actually very different gender identities. And there are some consequences for this error on their hearts. And I can't really explain what those are without massive spoilers. But this is one of the few stories I've ever seen that really explores the difference between someone who might be both genders versus someone who might be no gender at all and what that actually could mean. I would also add one trigger warning. There is a sexual assault that occurs in the book. It's not described in detail. It happens in the space between chapters. But there is a profound psychological aftermath that I also thought was felt very true to life. And it was a good handling of not glossing over what that kind of experience can do to a person. But that can be really hard for some folks to read. So I would include that as a trigger warning. But even with those caveats, the dated language and that trigger warning, I found this book, the good of it, far outweighed the bad. And so I'd recommend this as an exploration of what it might be to be non-gender, even though it is science fiction and it's speculative fiction. So it was definitely worth your time. It's just a little harder to read than the others. I think I'll hand it off to Cecilia. And then also these lights in here turn off automatically if I don't move very much. So if I just stand up for no reason, that's why. Just turned off on me a second ago. OK, so I chose two books that focus on disability. As I was thinking about what books I would read and talk about for today, I sort of found myself gravitating toward books that had themes or characters or were written by authors of color or focused on culture and ethnicity. And that's sort of just my general personal reading choices tend toward that way. And so I thought, well, I wanted to have a chance to choose books that opened my awareness in ways that I maybe am not not as aware as I could be. And so I found these two books that focus on focusing on disability. And for me, physical disability is something that I somewhat hesitantly admit that I haven't really thought about, except for maybe in the last two years, the ways that our physical environments create barriers for people that I have taken for granted. I'm only five feet, so I'm well aware of how the world is built for tall people. But there's a lot of other ways that this world is built that are not accessible for everyone. And so that was kind of my reason for choosing these two books. And I think I just I found them in, you know, just like review publications, like Booklist or Library Journal or something like that. So kind of having an eye or that lens on when I'm reading reviews, because I'm one of the selectors here at the library. And so just making sure that I'm being really intentional about when I'm reading reviews to have this lens on that helps me to see past my own personal experiences. Obviously, as selectors, we were not just choosing the books that we like, but making sure I have that extra awareness on as well. So these just kind of appeared in any of the publications that I think most librarians have access to, generally speaking. So the first one is Unbroken, a 13 story starring disabled teens. And this is it was edited by Marika, I believe. Can you, Angela, can you click on her on their name? And it should play like a it should go to like an audio file so you can play her announcement or her name. Hello, my name is Marika Maikam. My first name is pronounced like the Japelle song, which also happens to be one of my favorite songs. I knew I wasn't going to say her say their name correctly. So I added that link and there's a lot of other authors who pronounce their names on that website, too. So I thought that was really cool because it's having a name that a lot of people don't know how to pronounce it. First, I find it to be very important to try my best to pronounce other people's names correctly. So anyhow, the editor is one of the founding members of We Need Diverse Books and also founder of Diversify YA. And so I also felt like right off the bat, I had I was very trusting that the other authors were for this collection were selected very intentionally. All 13 of the authors. Experienced disability in some way in their lives as well. And there's some really new authors and then there's also some fairly well established young adult authors. So this is a YA book written for a young adult audience. So all of the short stories have a main character of a teenage main character who is experiencing some some disability. So there's teens with anxiety who are blind, have chronic pain. There's some mental illness and learning disability. So this there really is like diversity of the disabilities that people are experiencing. And there's also what I really liked is that there's diversity of personal experiences and identity as well amongst all the characters. So there's different religious backgrounds, represented sexual orientation, family life. There's quite a few characters who experience divorce in their families. And there's various gender expression and that sort of thing. So I thought I also appreciated how diverse, not just within within the whole aspect of these characters, just the whole range of human identities that are that people have. And then also it's also just very diverse in the genres. There's science fiction, there's fantasy. There's a lot of realistic fiction in there as well. So I really liked that aspect of it. And also a lot of the stories, they don't center on the character's disability, but show that that disability is one part of this whole character. And they're they're not written as, you know, superhuman or to teach other people a lesson, you know, help others learn and grow. They're not written that way. They're they're written these characters are just teenagers learning to navigate their own individual paths. And I really appreciated that part of it because then these other sort of universal themes also come about, you know, so there's a lot about friendships and supportive connections and communication and love interest and adventure and generally just sort of making sense of one's world within the book, within all these stories. So I liked that. Some of them, for me, were more of a window into another person's lived experience. And then some of them were more mirrors into my own experiences. You know, so I can't think when I read the ones with with teenagers to we're coping with anxiety, I was like, man, if I had known as a teenager that other people had these anxious, overwhelming thoughts, like how wonderful that would have been, you know, to feel that connection with others. So I thought there's nothing wrong with you. You're not alone. Right. Exactly. This isn't just some some random thing that you're experiencing. You know, there's there's other people out there who understand and so I thought that a lot of these characters kind of had that as well. But they're they're placed into these settings, you know, so there's some futuristic settings where you know, the the main character is working to like save the day in the science in this future world. And there was one where I think the title of the story was called Oh, dang it. I can't remember now. Just one or party of one plus one plus one. And she's a young Muslim girl who goes on Hajj, the like annual pilgrimage to Mecca. But she also has anxiety. And so her the story is about her going on this pilgrimage with her family while also like here comes anxiety along with me and how how that affects her life. And there's also characters who with chronic pain, they have, you know, they they use wheelchairs to get around or other reasons that they're using crutches or that sort of a thing. So it also talks about like that physical aspect of disability of some disabilities to to just physically navigate your world. So for me, I bless you. I think that this is a good book to recommend to young people who are looking for that mirror as well as a window. But to me, it's written it's written by and for people who are experiencing some disability. And so to me, it really held up a lot as a mirror. But also, I think, recommending for adults who just want to gain a greater understanding of the inner worlds of young people who are experiencing disability. I think it's a really great. A really great starting point for considering the young person's perspective with these experiences. So that's why I have for that one. So then I just like kind of chose this nonfiction, Accessible America, a history of disability and design by Beth Williamson. It doesn't sound too exciting, honestly, when you look at the title and the book cover. But it actually, I found that it read fairly easily. There is a lot about. So so Beth Williamson first is an associate professor of art history, theory and criticism at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. So this is something that, you know, she has she thinks about and has expertise in. So when she's looking at design in our in the United States and our physical world, it's not like she's just sort of coming at it from nowhere. It's also a part of a. New York University Press series. There's two other. There's just one other title. But the series is called Crip New Directions and Disability Studies. And you can if you look at the New York Press website, you can find the other title in that series as well. So. I I wouldn't off the bat recommend this book to somebody who is maybe just looking for like a personal lived experience story. So like someone who's looking more for a type of like memoir or autobiography kind of a story. It's not going to go that route. She doesn't go deeply into the people's lives. She's really focusing on design. But what I liked about it is that design does not just mean you know, like architecture. So she she does talk about architecture. She also talks about. Like regulatory codes and government standards, which doesn't sound super exciting either, but is very interesting when you think about how we have come to a place where you know, ramps are standard on new buildings and that sort of a thing. And so she goes into how we how we got there through advocates and people fighting for that right of accessibility in their physical environment. So she talks about those folks as well. But then there's also commercial design. So companies that are mass producing products that are not regulated, you know, there's no like government standard that they're like required to meet or anything. But there's the like the cuisine art food processor like the I can't remember what I think it was in the 70s. It got redesigned. And the man who redesigned it without there is no mention of this being a device that was more easily used for folks who had difficulty with knobs and buttons, you know, with their hands. But it was designed with that in mind. So like household appliances and that sort of a thing. It talks about commercial design in that way as well, making gadgets and devices more accessible. Because, you know, when we talk about accessibility, it's like is the door wide enough for a wheelchair to go through? Are our. Are the stacks, you know, spread out far enough that a wheelchair could pass through or someone with crutches could pass through and comfortably browse or shelves or that kind of a thing. But like just gadgets themselves that are more easily held by people or manipulated by folks. And then the part that was really fascinating to me that I had no knowledge of was a sort of DIY culture with folks experiencing physical disabilities. So, you know, the the book starts sort of post World War Two with World War Disabled World War Two veterans and the ways that the GI Bill was used to help to help them in rehabilitation and gaining better access. So it started off with mainly providing access for like prosthetics and rehabilitation in that in that way. And then the GI Bill got also began to include housing and automobiles as well. So that's kind of where the history starts. And then it goes on up through current time. So this was written or published in 2019. So it kind of goes all the way up to where we are now. And so back in the forties and fifties, you know, cuisine art wasn't making a food processor that was easy to use. People weren't building houses with wheelchairs, usage in mind. And so there was a lot of ways that that people would create their own gadgets to help them navigate in their own house. So, you know, one of them was like taking nails, like pounding nails a certain way into a long wooden spoon so that you could reach over the sink and turn your sink faucet on in the kitchen, because you can't get a wheelchair under. There's no wheelchair clearance under a kitchen sink. And most of us probably have that in our houses. And I've never thought about that before either. So there's she talks about those things as well, that DIY culture and sort of how it morphed into the disability rights activism that we saw in the sixties and the the ways that legislation came about and also failed. You know, so there was the there were certain policies or laws put in place, but then actually enforcing them didn't really happen. And so there's a there's not just a focus on talking about just physical things, but also about the social and cultural history of disability in the United States and the way that then she does that through the lens of design. So I found that to be a very fascinating perspective as well. I feel I feel like I could talk about a lot of different parts of this book for a long time, but it's so it. I just I recommend it for people who want to start thinking about the physical world in a different way. She talks about the narrowness of her scope only focusing on physical disability. So right off the bat, the author points out, like, I realized that this is just one aspect of, you know, disability, that there's this is a broader issue with barriers and access. But this is her scope. And she also talks about, which I thought was she doesn't talk about it thoroughly within the book, but about the ways that access was not equitable and is still not equitable. So if you're if, say in post World War Two, you're a veteran who lost an arm, but you are also a person of color, your access to use the GI Bill was not the same as, you know, say a white male coming from a middle class family. And also the ways that our culture is very individualistic. And so disability is treated as this, you know, this person needs to overcome this thing. These barriers out in the physical world are just ways for you to. You know, like, strengthen yourself and, you know, have grit in that sort of a thing versus thinking about collectively, like as a society, how are we how are we designing our world to be accessible for people of different disabilities, different abilities? So there's a lot of different aspects of the book. And I think whether you're reading it for the more historical and social aspect or you're reading it simply to just start thinking about the physical world, it's really fascinating. Talking about it now, I realize I like this book a lot more than I thought. So yeah, if you're if you're into just reading, like, you know, straight up nonfiction book, I really recommend it. So yeah, I'm going to say that's all I have to say for now about. And then I have the next two slides. I just thought to add this in here, because for me, when I'm reading, when I was reading, especially Unbroken, I didn't have a whole lot of knowledge or basis on how to understand, like, is this a helpful or hurtful book for people with disability? Am I reading, how am I reading this book? Because there's a lot of controversy about the book. Curious case of the dog in the night. Is that the title, I think? Right. Or the curious incident of the dog in the night. And I didn't know that I've only ever heard great praise. And then as I was looking more into titles, characters and disability, I found that there there is controversy about that and how that book represents people who have autism and or Asperger's. And so that kind of got me thinking, like, well, I don't have a very good basis for myself then. And I found this test. So kind of like the Bechdel test, which is sort of a way to critique if critique how movies are representing women. This is sort of a similar test to see how disability is being represented in you know, in movies or books or that sort of a thing. So I thought those were three questions that you could easily ask yourself as you're reading a book or watching a movie to sort of start to understand is this helpful or hurtful? I guess. And then the next one, if you go to the next slide, Angela, thank you. This one. I found this on a blog. The other ones from a blog, too. So, you know, take them for what they are. They're created by not experts or anything like that, although people are experts of their lives. So take it as you know. So this is just a flowchart asking some different questions. So similar concept, just different questions, different way to think of or not necessarily even different, I guess, but just some some other ways to think about what you're reading. Is it this flowchart is more trying to look at like are we normalizing disability in books or movies so that people are not othered or marginalized or simply used as a tool to advance the main character's plot point or, you know, that sort of thing. So. Those are those are my slides, I think. Hi. So I want to talk to you about the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge. And this is a way, actually, I find a lot of my books to kind of challenge me. So it's basically it was created five years ago by Book Riot and it's to encourage readers to pick up books they might have passed over or find new authors, new perspectives. I have a link to the 2019 challenge. You don't have to book pre-can, but it's a link to the 2019 challenge. And that's just like it's a PDF you can download and they have a journal this year, which is really nice. So you can it's got things on there like an epistolary novel collection, a book written from like in prison, something set in own voices from Mexico or Central America. So. It's really nice because it's there's definitely stuff on here that I wouldn't. Yeah, you can go back. But like I wouldn't necessarily think to pick up right away, but it's been a really good challenge for me. They also have a newsletter you can sign up for. And if you go to the Book Riot website for each challenge that they've got listed, they have a list of like 20 books that are, you know, from the perspective written in prison or 20 books set in on voices, that kind of thing for each challenge, which is really nice if you don't know like where to start. Yeah. So they have a newsletter, they have a podcast. Book Riot actually has a ton of podcasts. I get a lot of my books from them. Like they have one called All the Books, which comes out every Tuesday about like new books that are coming out. So Book Riot is great. You should check it out. And if you're not ready to commit to like the whole 2019 challenge, I did put a link on the bottom, which will just take you to the Read Harder website and you can kind of see if it's something you're interested in. And if not, I still encourage you to like click on some of their lists because it's got really good information. So yeah, I would encourage you to check them out. So my first book came out last year. It's called They're There by Tommy Orange. And this is actually his debut novel, which I don't know if all of you read it, but it's incredible. And I was super surprised that it was his first book. And Tommy Orange is, he is part of the Arapaho and Cheyenne tribe. Thank you. And so his book is really about like the, what it's like to be an urban Native American. It's set in Oakland, California, and it's 12 different points of view for the chapters. And it's centered around themes like alcoholism and unemployment and just kind of what the urban Native American experience is like in general. And then all of these characters come together around Aparawao in Oakland and like the attempted robbery and kind of what happens, like chaos, what happens from there. As you can see, it's won a couple of awards last year and it's been shortlisted for some for this year. So I'm sure a lot of you have read it, but if you haven't, I really encourage you to pick it up. And then last one. So this one, Convenience Store Woman. I came out here last year, but it actually came out in Japan in 2016. It's written by Sayaka Murata and it's translated by Ginny. Oh, I'm going to mess your name up Ginny. I'm sorry. Ginny Tapley Takamori. This book is super good and I haven't, I don't have as much experience with translated authors, but it's a category I've been more interested in getting into. And that's actually one of the read harder challenges this year. So yay. But it's about a woman who works as a part-time convenience store clerk and she's really happy with her job. She's good at her job. She is happy where she is, but everyone else in her life is essentially saying to her like, why aren't you trying to be full-time? Why aren't you trying to move up? Why aren't you married? So she's not conforming to what everyone else thinks is normal for her. And so she tries, she tries to do what everyone else says is normal and ultimately it's a story about like her finding her voice and finding her happiness. And I wasn't expecting to love it as much as I did, but it's amazing and I think you should definitely check out both of them. So that's all I have. Oh, last slide. Yeah. Sorry. That was it. No, that's cool. All right. Great. Thank you guys. If anyone does have any questions or comments, we didn't have anything come in through the slides. Someone did say one of the earlier books was the one they loved. Like maybe the second book you were talking about and I can't remember which one it was. They just said, I love that book. Which is great. Yes. So anyone does have any questions or thoughts on any of the books or anyone that you want to share about any titles you think people should be expanding their horizons and reading definitely share it to us. I always like when you, as you guys have, oh, as some of you have mentioned that last year we did the same, you guys, well, different people. Some of you that were the same. Some came on to the show to do a previous reading of the diversity session. It was actually March 21st. I was looking about it. So it would have been tomorrow, but a year ago. And I like that the diverse type of books you guys are suggesting are all sorts of things. Like I think last year it was talking about trying to read essays. If maybe that's not your genre that you're into, you know, trying things that are different for you. And it's just, you know, across the board, diverse could be just anything that's not main or just not that you've thought of to read for yourself. That book writing, you know, just do something that's not something you've ever thought about before. You know, do the hard thing, I guess, is the idea. Yeah. All right, so it looks like nobody has any questions or comments or anything else. Any last words you guys want to share before we do work on wrapping up for this morning? Thanks for having us. It's always fun to book talk about, like, books that we've been reading and stuff. Okay, actually we do, of course, right? Of course, as soon as I say it, it's all right. And she says, I work in a tribal college library and I'm wondering what other Native American related books you would suggest. So obviously that last one there that you had mentioned. Author attention. Sherman Alexi is a really good author to check out. Pretty much anything by Louise Erdrich. And there's, oh shoot, I just forgot the title. There's one. I really like an author named Linda Hogan. She's from Oklahoma. I've read pretty much everything she's ever written. I met her once. That was a highlight of my life. She signed my book. I'm not alone in it to nobody. Oh, and Joseph Boushek, someone else suggests in the chat, of course, yes. Who was that? Joseph Boushek. There's another one called Heart Berries by Teresa Marima. I haven't read it yet. And I can send you the author's name too, but she's really good. It's kind of like a memoir about her life and the history of her people. All right. And something else has, she says, oh, the original questioner says, thank you. Great. The mail's comments and said that they're actually on vacation, but didn't want to miss this show. So that's awesome. I want to know, I want to see more Muslim themed books. If there's anything in that area. And obviously that's a huge topic. You're talking about the very beginning about immigration issues and whatnot. And I don't know if there's anything in that area that you guys have any that you could quickly mention? There's one, I'm sorry, I keep mentioning books I haven't actually read yet, but there's one called internment. I don't know if you guys have heard of that one. It's kind of science fictiony, but it's like set in the very near future. And it's essentially if like America got internment camps for, you know, Muslim Americans. So kind of like reminiscent of the Japanese internment camps. I'm trying to find the author. Sorry. Is this one Samira Ahmed? Yes. That one's supposed to be really good. This may sound like a cop out answer. I know. So I apologize. But one thing that like there are so many reading lists. You just say like, I want to find more books about this topic or on these themes. And you like, you can just find reading lists. So I did that with, with disability and that's kind of how I got done it. Like this rabbit hole of talking about the curious incident of the, whatever that book is. You know, so I know that sounds like a cop out just to say like, we'll Google it. And I apologize for it. But I think that more and more you can find those, those reading lists and you may read some that aren't great, but I think that helps us build our, our own understanding of sort of critiquing and criticizing the books or, you know, examining maybe more than criticizing, examining the books that we're reading and understanding, you know, are they not representative of very, a very good representation of a person's experience or that sort of a thing. So that's my short answer, I guess. Adding to that, because there are so many reading lists out there, I like to try to find lists from at least two or three different people on the same rough topic. And then I look for the overlaps like, okay, people all say that this is a fantastic book about this group of people on this topic. That is a good sign. Yeah. Goodreads has a lot of really good lists too. There it is. Yeah, yeah, I just pulled control back to my screen because I was looking up because the original person was asking, do you recall the author? And I know I said it, but yeah, so here it is Samira. There's the internment one. And then someone else shared actually a link to a recent post that has some great books for teens representing the Muslim experience. Oh, library journal. Yep. So that would be a potentially good, and someone says there's always novelist. We have novelist. Yeah, plug there. If you look at the things on this, that's that's a great resource. Yeah. And I don't know, I mean, I have a lot of books from my library and I, the vendors that we use are really good too about, you know, because I order a lot of books in Spanish and they're really good about giving us lists of diverse ones. And like Anika said, I have that lens on because even though I am Hispanic and I can't just order Chicano authors, I have to order stuff that other people, you know, would want to read or something that challenges maybe my community or whatever. So I think that's, I found success with that, I guess. And I think something that I really appreciate about our profession is that more and more you see like articles and reviews that are specifically trying to highlight an uplift like marginalized voices, like historically marginalized voices. And I think that's happening more and more within our professional literature. You know, so like school library journal having this article, I think is just awesome. And I think it's, it's only becoming more into our professional awareness. This is the big name is, you know, journal saying, hey, here's a thing. Another one that someone mentioned, and this is, I just have to do a little searching on this. Of course, I'm not going to my pronounce her name, but I'm just looking. I'm going to read it advise. And you have that. So I have a, I'll give you to accessible. I guess. Louneった sounds, I have that in my left foot.施U. Yeah, yeah. When we finished . I don't, step through here to, and also a ba ba ba ba ba bba ba ba ba. I can't, yep, yeah. after 11 a.m. That's okay. We're chatting about books. We'll chat as long as we want. You're interested in learning more about the Muslim culture because I am taking this cultural communication class. It's amazing. I feel like I'm learning so much. But there's a show, a Canadian show called Little Mosque on the Prairie. If you want to have a fun view into that, I highly recommend it. You can totally YouTube it. I had to watch it for the classes and do a post or whatever about it. But then I kept watching it because it's interesting to see how different... I mean, I was raised like super Catholic, so I know nothing about... So I felt... And it's okay to feel stupid. It's okay to put yourself in that vulnerable position. And I kept watching it because it's kind of funny, but yet they touch on all of these things, like the women not having as much say-so and what have you. It's really kind of cool. So that'd be kind of a fun way to learn about that. Cynthia, the one who's asking about this, did say she's seen it too. Funny stuff, yes. Yeah. I was surprised. I didn't... like Anika said about the book. I didn't think I'd like it as much as I did, but... Yeah, here's... Yeah, here's a... It's pretty good. There on through Amazon for... If you wanted to buy it. But I'm sure, you know, you can find it elsewhere for... Get it at your library, look for it online. All right. And now the list that we've mentioned, this is something for Nebraska libraries just to let you know. This is something we have through our Nebraska Access databases for those of you who are Nebraska librarians. We have various databases that if you are signed up for them, it's free through us. You can get available access to them in their novelist plus here. And I think even down below we have the kids for K through 8. So yeah, definitely use that for reading suggestions. Oh, Amrika. Now I can't think of the author. That was the book that I did for our poster session. And it talks about Muslims in the United States and like the ways that they've contributed over the over like the history of the United States. I actually read that book and I can't believe I forgot that I'd... But that one I really enjoyed because it's looking at the contributions of Muslim people in the United States. And also their experiences post 9-11, which was really eye-opening. Which one? What was that one? Amrika. It's A-M-R-E-E-K-A, I think. I can't think of the author's name. We're buying stuff of it, a film made of it. What movie called Amrika? Interesting. Oh, okay. A country called Amrika is the book title. So I'm doing my messy searching on my other monitor. I don't want to see how I can't spell or... It's Arab roots, American stories. So some of the people in it are... So I apologize, I misrepresented it. Some of the characters or the people in the book are Muslim, but not all of them are because those are two different identities. I remember her talking about that. All right. Anything else anybody wants to ask about before we wrap it up finally here? A lot of good tips here. As I said, we're recording the shows. If you missed anything, you'll be able to access the recording later. Angela, since you have them, can you email me the slides? Or if you post them somewhere, I can link to them, whichever works for you guys. So then you'll have access to all those links and things that were built into the presentation that was included. All right. All right. So then I think we will wrap it up for today. Thank you very much all of you for being here. In spite of the floods and the water, we're still going strong. This is what's great about doing these online sessions. Originally, I know everyone was going to get together up in Norfolk where Nick is, but due to roads being damaged, not able to do it. But being online, we can just come in from wherever we are, just like all of you who are watching. So we make it happen. So we are recorded this morning. So as I'm going to show you here is our main and campus live website where we have all our upcoming shows right beneath them as a link to our archives. So if you go here at the top of the list here, we'll be today's recording should have it done by the end of today, as long as go to webinar on YouTube cooperate with me. I'll have the this is last week of the recording a link to presentation will both be here. Everyone who attended this morning and registered for for the show, even if you weren't able to come watch us live, you'll all get an email from me letting you know when the recording is available. It will also be announced out on our very social media. We have a Facebook page or Encompass Live Facebook page over here. We post things as a reminder for today's show. When we have other shows coming up, we post about them. So if you are a big Facebook user, definitely give us a like over there to also keep up on what we're doing. I'll show you here while you're here are here on the archives. This is the entire archives of Encompass Live. This is this year. I think 2019 is the 11th year of the show. We started in January 2009, which is just great to think of it that way. But we do have all of our archives are going back to the very beginning. You can search if you want to all the full archives or just do the most recent 12 months years worth if you want just something current. So do keep you aware of that if you are searching and looking through our archives, pay attention to the date when the show was originally broadcast. As you get farther down in these, you will have some shows with things that the service or product doesn't exist anymore or something has changed very drastically from when we originally did it. Some of the links to things might be broken because things have moved on. Well, we don't keep up with necessarily all of that, but pay attention to when your original broadcast date was if you do watch any of our archives on here. So that will be out this afternoon. I hope you'll join us next week when our topic is health education. Health education resources with the National Network of Libraries of Medicine. And actually, I just heard Robin, who is originally going to help us out with this is unable to join us next week. But she has another staff person from I'm just gonna look it up here. I just hadn't had a chance to change it. It's just where Alicia Lilich, who's actually does the same thing before Kansas will actually be joining us to talk about this. So health education resources that you can use in your libraries, things on also different topics that if you have anybody come into your library looking for this kind of information, you can learn more about what the National Network of Libraries of Medicine can do for you. And do please do sign up for any other upcoming shows that we have coming in here. I've got our April and May shows set up in there. I've got one I've still got to get the May first ones will be added there soon too as well. So please do sign up for anything else you do see on here. And keep an eye on our Facebook page. Other than that, that does wrap it up for today's show. Thank you all everyone for presenting and everyone for attending. And I'll help you join us on a future episode of Encompass Live. Bye bye.